Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to initiate payment transactions at merchants and other service providers. For example, a consumer may have credit card and debit card account information provisioned onto their mobile phone. The mobile phone may be used to initiate a transaction at a merchant. For instance, the consumer may be able to use their phone to initiate a transaction at a point-of-sale (POS) device by passing payment information associated with the provisioned credit or debit card accounts to a contactless reader over a short-range communication channel.
Each card account provisioned to the phone may have a different payment application associated with it. Each mobile payment application may be stored in a secure memory and may be identified by an application identifier (AID) that is passed to the POS during a transaction. The POS may select an application identifier to obtain the payment information associated with the selected account from the phone. For example, a credit card account and a debit card account that is provisioned to a phone may have a first application identifier (AID) and a second application identifier (AID), respectively. The credit card account information and the debit card account information may be stored in separate payment applications in a secure memory of the mobile device. The application identifier may identify the payment application where the account information may be obtained for a selected account. Accordingly, during transaction processing, a POS that determines that the transaction should be initiated using the credit card account may send a selection of an application identifier associated with the application that is storing the credit card account information.
Each payment application may include different authentication options, processing capabilities, and loyalty and/or cardholder benefit options. Accordingly, consumers and merchants may have different interests and motivations for selecting a particular payment application for use in a transaction. Thus, the application identifier (and provisioned account information) ultimately used to conduct a payment transaction may depend on the preferences of the merchant, user, and/or payment application.
Furthermore, the amount of time that elapses during a short range communication interaction between a phone and a POS is very short. The time of the interaction is short to ensure the information exchange and/or transaction preparation is completed before a consumer moves the phone out of communication range with the POS. Additionally, the short communication period enhances the consumer experience since they are not forced to hold their phone within the short communication range of the POS for a long period of time.
The amount of time that a near-field communication (NFC) interaction may take can include the amount of time that it takes for a consumer to move their phone to an NFC reader of a POS and then away from it. As such, the consumer is not required to hold their phone to the POS for any period of time and no partial exchange or transaction preparation occurs because the interaction is completed before a user can remove their phone.
However, because the interaction is so short, the transaction may not be completed by the time the mobile device is moved outside of communication range with the POS. Thus, if a transaction is unsuccessful for any reason, there is no ability for the POS to obtain additional payment information from the phone. Accordingly, the transaction would have to be re-initiated and a consumer would be forced to place their phone close to the POS again to initiate a transaction using a different payment application and/or payment credentials. This can be inconvenient and time consuming for the consumer and merchant. Additionally, a consumer may have to select a new application for payment through the phone and/or may have to change settings on their phone before re-initiating the transaction.
Accordingly, with the emergence of payment applications with multiple different processing options, associated with different entities, providing different benefits, etc., a more flexible system is required to address the growing mobile payment application environment. Thus, a need exists for consumers, merchants, wallet providers, and other interested parties to a transaction to have multiple options for transaction processing without requiring additional inefficient and time-consuming merchant and/or consumer interaction.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.